


Unfinished Melody

by Mizmak



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Short & Sweet, metaphor abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23757664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizmak/pseuds/Mizmak
Summary: Just another variation on a first kiss -- Aziraphale has heard a certain unfinished melody between him and Crowley for 6,000 years, and it's time to add the finishing note.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 84





	Unfinished Melody

The world felt faintly out of tune, and Aziraphale did not know why.

One week after saving the world, he went for a stroll in St. James’s Park, with Crowley sauntering close beside him. 

“Last sunny hours before the autumn rains,” his friend had said when they headed out. “Supposed to be drenching by this evening.”

“Are you sure that’s proper grammar?”

“What? Oh. Don’t know.” Crowley shrugged. “Don’t care. Come on, time to feed the ducks.”

They stood by the railing, tossing park-approved birdseed into the pond, and they watched the ensuing squawking and scrabbling, and then they retired to their favorite bench for a quiet little rest.

Aziraphale looked out across the trim lawn, and at the people strolling along the paths, and wondered why things felt _off_. 

Perhaps, he thought at first, it was simply because he had so suddenly become redundant. After six thousand years of regular instructions from Heaven, there were no more communications, no more blessings or miracles to perform, not even any wiles to thwart. If he no longer did Heaven’s bidding on Earth, did that mean he was not a proper angel anymore?

But then, a few days into this sort of brooding, he had glanced out his bookshop window to see a heedless young man dart across the street in front of a car, and he snapped his fingers without a moment’s hesitation to steer the driver away at the last second.

He didn’t _need_ instructions. There was no reason he couldn’t go on doing small miracles or blessings here and there, now and then, when the need arose. Not useless after all.

So his abrupt departure from Heaven had not caused this feeling of being out of sorts – of something in his world being off-key.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Hm?” The sun was shining. A few golden and red leaves fluttered to the pavement in the autumn afternoon. He was on Earth still, in one of his favorite places, free from worry at being with his favorite person on Earth. “What?”

“Why so quiet today?”

He wished he could see Crowley’s eyes. Worst invention ever, sunglasses. “Sorry. Something you wish to talk about?”

Crowley shrugged. “Not really. Just thought you might be thinking too much. You do that.”

“Yes, I suppose I do.” Fretting overly much again. 

“Anything bothering you?”

“No, no.” He paused. “Perhaps. I’m not sure.”

Crowley touched his arm then, lightly. “Hey. It’s over. Right? No more worries, Angel. We’re all right now.”

_Are we?_ Aziraphale stared at the long, slender fingers resting on his arm, and he wondered. Were they all right? Was their world truly _right_ or was there a subtle disharmony weaving a thread through them both?

_How do I put this – whatever this is – in tune?_

“Can we go back to the bookshop now?” he asked. 

“Sure.” The touch ended as they stood up, and Aziraphale wished that he could feel it still.

There had been three motifs playing throughout his long life on Earth.

_Love of the world itself_ , in all its natural glories – the seas, the skies, the wondrous mountain peaks and forested hills, the vast plains with thundering herds of the most splendid animals. The trees, the flowers, the marvelous fishes and the soaring, beautiful birds. All of the natural world filled him with love.

_Love of humanity_ , in all its cleverness, inventiveness, its conquest of every trial and travail, and the way the humans could build tremendous civilizations, and create great art. There was surely much darkness, too, but rather than dwell on individual evils, Aziraphale chose to cherish the good that he found at every turn, and to love what the humans loved wherever and whenever he possibly could.

Then there was the third strain that had built from a few short notes at the beginning of his time on Earth into a crashing crescendo of sound, a symphony which held a steady melodic theme of _yearning_ within, yet which threatened to lose that heartfelt refrain in odd, discordant moments. 

_Love your enemy_.

Crowley was his counterpoint in those earthly harmonics.

And while he had not always found it easy, Aziraphale found that he _needed_ to love his enemy, that he wanted to weave that motif throughout his life here on Earth. 

He wondered now if perhaps the reason his world felt out of tune was because the first two motifs had been complete in and of themselves, yet the third remained unfinished. 

The notes had not all been heard yet. 

He needed to hear the one that was still unwritten.

After their walk, Crowley parted ways at the bookshop, with a promise of dinner at the Ritz, and as he pulled away in his car, the first raindrops started to fall.

The rain was practically of Biblical proportions.

It rained all the rest of that afternoon and into the evening, and while that wasn’t unusual for London, the torrential downpour it turned into was rather worrisome.

When he and Crowley went to dinner at the Ritz, the rain poured down in sheets. By the time they headed back to the bookshop for a nightcap, Crowley had to plow his beloved Bentley through deep puddles where the drains had stopped up. 

He found a miraculous parking space in front of the shop, but even the few feet from the car to the door left them both drenched.

“Are you sure we’re not having a second Flood?” Crowley asked as they got safely inside.

“It does seem rather excessive.” Aziraphale snapped his fingers to instantly dry his clothes, then took off his coat to hang it up. “Though I’m fairly certain this is not the end of the world again.”

Crowley snapped his own clothes dry and sauntered over to the desk, where he flicked on the radio there. He fiddled the dial to get a weather report. Aziraphale only half-listened as he went to fetch two glasses and a bottle of wine.

“What was that I heard?” he asked as he filled the glasses. “Something about not driving?”

“Yeah.” Crowley turned off the radio. “Too many flooded drains. Rain not stopping until dawn, stay off the streets. Damn.”

“Well, you can be perfectly comfortable here.” Aziraphale handed him a glass. 

“Right. Whatever.” Crowley affected his usual nonchalance as he sank onto the sofa. “ _Listen_ to that.”

Aziraphale sat at his desk chair. What he heard was a steady, heavy drumming against the windows. Then a gust of wind slammed rain sideways into the glass. He did a quick miracle to add shutters, closing off the noise. “Most unpleasant.”

“Think I’ll stay put.” Crowley settled down more on the sofa, propping several pillows behind his head. A few moments later, he shifted about again, this way and that, rearranging the pillows each time. He tried moving his legs into various positions. “This sofa is too short.” He gave up trying to lie down, and resumed his usual slouching, seated position.

“Yes, I suppose it is.” Aziraphale took a long drink of his wine. And then, into the quiet within this haven of his, he felt a yearning to add a new note. “You know,” he said softly, “there is a bedroom upstairs.” He used it once in a while, enjoying a respite from the world from time to time. “Sleep there, if you wish.” 

Crowley sat there, his glass halfway to his lips. “Oh?”

“You’ll be more comfortable.” That was all. Just that, nothing more. 

Or in truth, if his friend could hear the underlying note too, it was much, much more.

“Right.” Crowley took a sip of his wine. Then he took off his sunglasses and set them on the coffee table. “I think I’ll do that.” He reached for the bottle. “In a while.”

“Of course.” It was only a little after ten, too soon for sleep. Aziraphale watched as Crowley refilled his glass, and handed over the bottle. He filled his own, and relaxed in his chair. The note was there, hovering around them, a light note of invitation that he knew they could both hear. 

It had to take its time to filter through the noise of everything they had seen and done and heard during that hectic time only one week ago…was it only one week ago? All that cacophony of Armageddon had sounded just seven days past, yet its tempo had slowly diminished, _allegro_ to _moderato_ to _andante_ … _adagio_ into _largo_ …and then blessedly, into silence.

A new note took time to weave between them, to merge with all the others that had sounded around them through the centuries. He knew Crowley could hear it, he just hadn’t placed it yet within the larger melody.

But he would. Aziraphale felt something deep inside, on this night, in this place – a subtle shift in tune that brought him closer to Crowley than he had ever been before. 

They drank the bottle of wine, and then a second bottle, and they chatted idly about nothing of any consequence, until the clock struck midnight.

Crowley yawned, stretched, and half-rolled off the sofa into a slightly swaying stance. “Going upstairs.” His gaze was bright – as if his eyes held starlight within. And perhaps they did. With an ever so slight hesitation, he added, “You coming, too?”

Aziraphale looked at his friend – his closest, dearest friend – and thought about how very much he wanted to share the bed with him, and how clearly he heard that call. “I’ll clear this up. Go on, I won’t be long.”

“All right.” Crowley tilted his head, and with an ever so slight smile, he turned to go up the stairs.

Aziraphale set down his empty wine glass. He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Sleep would not come amiss. He rose, picked up the glasses and bottles, and took them to the small sink nearby. After rinsing out the glasses and dropping the bottles into the waste bin, he went upstairs to the bedroom. Crowley was already fast asleep and did not stir at all when he joined him beneath the covers. 

When Aziraphale awoke sometime in the depths of night, with the rain still lashing against the windowpanes, he felt a slight weight on his chest. 

Crowley had turned on his side towards him, nestled up close, an arm flung over him. As Aziraphale contemplated what to do or say about this, or whether he ought to simply try to sleep again and pretend it never happened, he felt Crowley stirring.

“Mmmphh.” It was one of his typical nonverbal sounds. He made a few more of them, and stretched out the arm briefly before dropping it back around Aziraphale’s chest.

“Crowley? Are you awake?”

“Urmph. Mm-hmm.”

He decided to allow his friend an out, should he need it, although he didn’t truly think that he did. He had heard the note, and yet…had he put it into its proper place yet? “My dear, are you being affectionate, or are you merely feeling cold?”

Silence followed, a stillness into which he wished he could say something more, anything, something to ease this tension. What he truly wanted was to return the embrace but he dare not do so until Crowley responded, for fear they were still out of tune, and that this was no more than what he’d suggested – a need for warmth, and nothing else.

And then, into that moment where Aziraphale held his hopes securely in check, Crowley whispered, “I’m not cold.”

_Ah_. Aziraphale released a deep sigh. Then he lay his arm atop Crowley’s and pressed gently, and said, “Good.”

He felt Crowley shift even closer, his head onto his own pillow, and then Crowley brushed his lips against Aziraphale’s cheek before settling against his shoulder. 

They lay quietly for a time, and Aziraphale listened to the rain. They had slipped so easily from friendship into love in one simple moment, with one soft touch. He knew there had been love between them for a long long time, though not like _this_. There had been a hidden love, buried under the weight of his duty to Heaven, and a hopeful love whenever Crowley reached out to him for companionship, and there had been a forsaken love when impetuous words had parted them.

_This_ was a newfound love that finally drew together all the strands of light and warmth and _need_ together into one harmony, a love that had heard and remembered every soft note plucked throughout six thousand years, every wishful chord sounded across the centuries — a love that wove their two melodies in and out and around each other until finding the music that merged their souls into one perfect song.

Aziraphale remembered every note along the way.

_And what now,_ he wondered. Where does the song take us from here?

Into a new world, he thought. A new place where he and Crowley could live without fear, or regret, or loss. A sacred space of their own making, where love could live unconfined.

“Angel?” Crowley’s gentle voice broke into his musing. “You still awake?”

“I am.” He could lie here contentedly all through the night, not needing to sleep, only needing to hold and be held.

“Do you think…um…maybe…” Crowley sounded rather hesitant. “I mean, would it be all right…if I stayed here?” There was a pause. “All the time?”

“Oh?” He wished to stay at the bookshop? But Crowley had always been so independent. “Are you sure you want that – you want to live here?”

“Yeah. Feels more like a home here.”

Thank goodness. That flat of Crowley’s had always struck Aziraphale as cold and comfortless. “Of course you can.” 

Crowley nodded. “I’ll do that, then.” 

Aziraphale did something he had never done before – he ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, pleasantly surprised at how soft it felt. Then he caressed his friend’s forehead briefly, before leaning in to kiss the place he had touched. “This is nice. Just being here, I mean.”

“Yeah…guess I can do that. Not a four-letter word after all.”

“Hm?”

“ _Nice_.” Crowley undid a button of Aziraphale’s pyjama top and slid his hand beneath the satin fabric. He started a gentle, slow caress of Aziraphale’s chest. 

Aziraphale relaxed under the warm touch. He understood love, and he knew love, and he felt more of it in that easy caress than he’d ever felt before in all of his existence. 

He returned it by slipping his hand round Crowley’s back, underneath his silk top, and stroking up and down those taut muscles until he felt them ease, until he heard a light sigh of contentment from his friend.

So much comfort resided in every touch.

They exchanged a few more light kisses on foreheads, then cheeks, and then Aziraphale felt Crowley’s lips on his, just for a moment, but it was a moment that suddenly aligned all the harmonies of his life.

And then the rain abruptly stopped. 

Aziraphale blinked. He looked at the window as if not quite believing, yet he knew that the rain had ceased at the precise instant of that one kiss, and he wondered about it, but surely it didn’t truly mean anything other than an ineffable coincidence?

“The rain’s stopped,” he whispered into the darkness.

Aziraphale was lying on his back then, with Crowley nestled alongside him, an arm across his chest as before, head nestled against his shoulder. 

“Not a fan of rain,” Crowley replied as his body shivered a little, then relaxed again. “Don’t like getting wet. Or cold. Hate the bloody damp, too.”

“Yes, I know.” He had known it instinctively from the first time they’d met on the wall of Eden. He had known, and had offered the shelter of his wing when the Earth’s first rains fell.

He kissed Crowley then, on the lips, longer and more deeply, and when they broke apart, he said, “It was a good rain, though. Kept you here tonight.”

Crowley smiled. “Nowhere else I’d want to be.”

“Oh, really?” Aziraphale loved that Crowley felt so comfortable here.

“It’s home,” Crowley said. “So long as you’re here, too, that is.”

He had no plans to go anywhere else, anytime soon. Even if he had, Aziraphale knew that Crowley would go with him, even to the ends of the Earth…or to the end of the world.

“Always,” he whispered. 

“Angel…did you hear something just then…when we kissed?”

Aziraphale nodded. “A little celestial harmony, I think.”

“No,” Crowley replied. “ _Earthly_ harmonies.”

“Yes, of course.” The only place where they could weave their melodies together. “I do believe the music is much better here.”

“ _I_ knew that.”

“Yes, of course you did.” Aziraphale briefly tightened his embrace. “I love you.”

“Yes,” Crowley replied. “Of course you do. I can see that. I can hear that. And I love you, too.”

They kissed again, and caressed each other, and they fell into a lazy sleep, on again, off again, loving each other with a long-held yearning, and as the night drew on, Aziraphale knew that from now on, they would always, _always_ stay in tune.


End file.
